Creative Time Response II

Round: Sound for Concave Surfaces by Max Neuhaus

This was a three-day audio installation designed for the landmark rotunda of the U.S Custom House at Bowling Green. The unusual acoustics of the elliptical marble space challenged Neuhaus to create an original work for the project. He engaged audiences in a soundscape that circulated around the space via a ring of speakers, creating the sense of a constant circular movement. It was immediately apparent that sustained electronic sounds were moving around the space. Whatever faded in on the loudspeaker at the viewer’s right would pass on to the loudspeaker on the viewer’s left a beat later, and from there to the other 14 speakers of the outer circle. Every eight beats a new sonority would pass by the viewer, and the music just kept rotating.

Anemones: An Air Aquarium by Otto Piene

Otto Piene interpreted I.M Pei’s architecture at 88 Pine Street as a fish tank and created a walk-through, soft-sculpture environment of inflated fish and sea anemones. The sea life, ranging in size from ten to forty feet, were constructed from red spinnaker cloth and clear polyethylene, and surrounded by multicolored translucent sheets. Then the underwater creatures inflated and deflated according to a timer that Piene set up, thus creating the illusion of slow breathing. For the passersby, Anemones is an unexpected lunchtime air aquarium. The theme of this venture is scale, along with movement,” said Piene.

Rent a Body by Paco Cao

Rent a Body was the United States premiere of a long-term project by Spanish artist Paco Cao. He probed relations between art and commerce by offering himself as a service for the public to rent. Reflective of his interest in the connections between art and the market economy, Cao’s project consisted of an agency in Spain, through which he advertised his services for hire—ranging from being a physical presence ($35/hr) to engaging in intense intellectual activity ($150/hr). They were marketed through brochures distributed on countertop displays in stores, bodegas, and hotels around the city. People rented Paco for a wide array of social experiments taking place in homes, streets, television, and even churches.